Alberta Business Marketing

This Calgary Consultant was schooled on the Art of Leadership.  It is always wonderful when I have an opportunity to learn from others in our business community.

I first met Angel Rodriguez through my good friend Shawne Duperon and then through Daniel Gutierriez.  Now, My good friend and trusted colleague from Frito Lay, Angel Rodriguez has taught me a thing or two about the art of leadership and how leadership skills for highly trained executives in business actually works.

During my short 45 minute call with Angel we discussed social media and it’s role in larger organizations. The conversation quickly woke me up a bit when Angel and I were chatting about how our colleagues in an organization such as Frito Lay where Angel served as an executive VP for a number of years use social media.  They don’t use these services the way many small businesses use social media.

It is not uncommon for a company like Frito to obtain large followings on many different social media platforms and have groups where former employees, current employees and fans of their products gather to keep in touch with each other and to continuously network.  Pepsi has over 800,000 followers and I believe Coke has something like 2 million.  Coke’s story on social media is truly unique. It is actually run by fans of Coke from what I understand during my research on Facebook Fan Pages.

Angel shared with me, true leaders, inspire and provide a platform for others to excel.  In the social media world, this translates to education and sharing.  Social Media for any type of leader provides an easy to access and readily available platform for business leaders to excel.  However, the business leader must be open to trying new things and be open to teaching others, just like Angel taught me.

I believe a number of small businesses can also use this philosophy and have success with it.  Instead of the usual messaging we see on Twitter, Facebook and others where small business are always pushing.  Maybe it is time to let the guard down and show our human side and offer to teach.

In my role as a social media consultant I have an opportunity every day to help business owners and marketing professionals around the world learn how to truly inspire those in their communities and markets.  Angel taught me a couple of things today around leadership and some of his lessons from Frito Lay.

How can I take this leadership lessons and put them into practice in my social media consulting role.  It is about leadership and making a difference.

Tags: Angel, Angel Rodriguez, business leader, Business/Finance, Calgary Consultant, Daniel Gutierriez, executive VP, Facebook Inc, Frito-Lay, guard, leadership, Mass media, media consulting role, media platforms, media world, Pepsico Inc., Shawne Duperon, social media consultant, Social Media Ventures Inc, Television, Twitter Inc, VP for a number
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off

I got a very timely and critical email from my mentor Arlin Sorensen the other day.  Arlin just has the knack of hitting me with his virtual 2×4 at the right time and he does it well.  Arlin is the mastermind behind the Peer Power blog and Heartland Tech Groups.  Arlin is a very faithful man and a leader inside/outside the tech support community.

This post of his got me thinking about social media.  There is a lot of people making a tremendous amount of noise, but do we have a leader in our space?  Not the person who is the most technical or the smartest marketer.  Someone who is humble enough to lead our community?  A person who can call it like it is and be there to support our group?  Do we have an Arlin Sorensen in the Social Media world?

One of things Arlin did for me was tear down the walls of competition…plus he helped me through a very rough patch in my life.

Can I lead this community? Do I have what it takes to do what Arlin did in the tech world and apply what I learned from him in the social media world?

Does being a leader in the Canadian social media community mean dismissing competition and embracing those around me?  Does this mean we are here to serve and to put the needs of others before my own needs?  Do I still put my oxygen mask on first?

I know the entire online marketing community here in Calgary and across the globe needs some leadership.  A few are providing this and doing a great job.  But we can always use more.

Are you willing to step up?  This means openly sharing what you know for the great good of our community.  This is something I have noticed big time during my transition to the marketing world.  These guys don’t like to share within their community.  It is like old school business…let’s not tell anyone anything and never think about helping our competitor or someone who claims to do the same thing we do.  I even got caught in that yesterday.  I was reminded about competition from Bob Burg as well yesterday.

Gotta walk the walk if I am going to talk the talk.

Read Arlin’s blog post on Leadership in our community.

Tags: bob burg, Calgary, Human Interest, leader, media community mean dismissing competition, media world, Music industry, online marketing community, Read Arlin, social media, The Master
Posted in Alberta Business | | Comments Off